We talk with Cory Doctorow, who came up with the term "enshittification" to describe what happens when power is consolidated into unaccountable corporate hands. We go from social media, to climate change, to captured regulators, to anti-trust laws and the lack of enforcement of them. An insightful and thought-provoking interview.
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&Death of a Fantastic Machine (aka the camera) is a short documentary on “what happens when humanity’s infatuation with itself and an untethered free market meet 45 billion cameras”…and now AI. It’s about how — since nearly the invention of the camera — photos, films, and videos have been used to lie & mislead, a trend that AI is poised to turbo-charge. Not gonna sugar-coat it: this video made me want to throw my phone in the ocean, destroy my TV, and log off the internet never to return. Oof.
The short is adapted from a feature-length documentary directed by Maximilien Van Aertryck and Axel Danielson called And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine (trailer). Van Aertryck & Danielson made one of my all-time favorite short films ever, Ten Meter Tower (seriously, you should watch this, it’s fantastic…then you can throw your phone in the ocean).
P.S. I hate the title the NY Times gave this video: “Can You Believe Your Own Eyes? Not With A.I.” That is not even what 99% of the video is about and captures none of what’s interesting or thought-provoking about it. However, it is a great illustration of one of the filmmakers’ main points: how the media uses simplifying fear (in this case, the AI bogeyman 🤖👻) to capture eyeballs instead of trying to engage with complexities. “Death of a Fantastic Machine” arouses curiosity just fine by itself. (via craig mod)
Tags: artificial intelligence · Axel Danielson · Maximilien Van Aertryck · movies · photography · video